movie reviews…mostly

Weekend Cartoon Roundup: X-Men, Spidey & Avengers

Faced with another evening of the dreck that currently serves as children’s programming on The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon (iCarly aside. Still can’t believe Sam kissed Freddy), I employed a little forbidden black magic karate to snatch the remote from the hands of my children and inflicted some superhero cartoons on them.

Thanks to the miracle that is Netflix streaming, with a simple wave of my Wii remote, I have instant access to thousands of horrible movies you couldn’t pay me to watch. Luckily they also have some cartoons.

X-Men: The Animated Series (1992) – First up was this early nineties Saturday morning staple. We watched the two-part premier episode “Night of the Sentinels,” and I immediately felt like I was transported back in time to the heyday of the Uncanny X-Men comic written by Chris Claremont in the 1980s. The animation was bargain basement cheap, but they got all the details right: Stylized and garish costumes, big 80s mall hair, mutants with silly accents.

The story was essentially big robots programmed to hunt down mutants. Jubilee, a young girl who just discovered her mutant abilities is turned in by her father (nice) and attacked by Sentinels at the mall. The X-Men show up to rescue her, including Gambit and his exploding playing cards, histrionic Storm and grumpy as hell Wolverine. I was in heaven. Loved it. Kids were less than impressed. Moving on…

The Spectacular Spider-Man (2008) – First, let me just say that there must be something about Spider-Man that inspires really cool theme songs. I grew up with the classic:

And I still say it’s the best. But check out this one:

Pretty sweet, eh? We watched “Attack of the Lizard.” There was no Lizard, but it was fantastic. The kids LOVED it, and so did I. One of the best comic book to animation adaptations I’ve seen. They really hit all the notes. And no origin story, thank heavens. I grow weary of endless origin stories. We know about the spider. We know about Uncle Ben. We got it.

The episode starts with Peter heading off to his first day of school thinking his new Spider-Man powers will help elevate his status above science nerd. Regardless of radioactive blood, however, he immediately gets rejected by a cheerleader and bullied by Flash Thompson.

After school his best friend Harry’s Dad (future Green Goblin Norman Osbourne) gets kidnapped by The Vulture, and Spidey gives chase only to be intercepted by a shadowy group of villains hired to bring him down.

It really had everything: Action, characters, humor and excellent design. We’ll be watching more of these.

We watched “Iron Man is born!” And if you liked the Iron Man movie, chances are you’re gonna love this. The voice actor playing Iron Man (Eric Loomis) does an uncanny Robert Downey impression. Not just the sound of his voice; The mannerisms and character are nearly identical. And he’s just as entertaining.

In this episode, the United Nations building is attacked by Hydra (great, old-school Marvel terrorist group). Iron Man arrives and quickly dispatches them, only to have Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. arrive on the scene and attempt to arrest him.

This was another big winner. Extremely entertaining and made us hungry for more.

Needless to say, Dad pulled out a winner, and I’ve been granted permission on a trial basis to occasionally take control of the television for semi-annual cartoon night.